Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

Back in Washington, Franklin found the city hot and humid. Congress and the Supreme Court were adjourned, but in the executive branch it was business as usual. “The Secretary and I worked like niggers all day,” he wrote Eleanor in late July. Daniels was preparing to go on vacation for two weeks and would leave FDR in charge. “He has given me carte blanche and says he will abide by my decisions.”44

  “I think it is quite big of him to be willing to let you decide,” Eleanor replied. “It shows great confidence.”45

  Roosevelt could not have been happier. “I now find my vocation combined with my avocation in a delightful way,” he wrote an old Harvard chum, Charlie Munn.46 Socially, FDR had also arrived. Years later he liked to joke that Washington society provided three diversions: “the saloon, the salon, and the Salome.” The “saloon” was a house where drinks flowed freely; the “salon” a house where artists and intellectuals congregated; the “Salome” was Roosevelt’s term for “a mansion where the music was soft, so were the sofas, and the ladies were very pretty.” Franklin was welcome at all three.47

  As a member of Wilson’s subcabinet and as a Roosevelt, Franklin was readily accepted by Washington’s cave-dwelling social establishment. His good looks, natural friendliness, and buoyant optimism made him a much-sought-after dinner companion. Bainbridge Colby, later secretary of state, thought him “the handsomest and most attractive man in Washington.”48 British diplomat Nigel Law found him “the most attractive man whom it was my good fortune to meet during my four years in America.”49 Yale football coach Walter Camp called him “a beautifully built man, with the long muscles of an athlete.”50

  Franklin was a frequent guest at the home of Cousin Alice and Nicholas Longworth, fashionable leaders of Republican society in exile. Longworth had been given a two-year sabbatical from Congress by the voters of Cincinnati, but that did little to dampen his hospitality or stanch the flow of booze and gossip for which he and Alice were famous.51 TR’s old friends such as the British and French ambassadors, Sir Cecil “Springy” Spring-Rice and Jules Jusserand, made a point of seeking Franklin out, as did Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge.* Harvard friends seemed to appear from nowhere; FDR entertained many of them cruising down the Potomac on the Sylph, the smaller of two yachts the Navy maintained for the president. Weekends were sometimes spent at Doughoregan Manor, the baronial Maryland estate leased by his old Harvard roommate, Lathrop Brown, who had just been elected to Congress as a Democrat from New York’s silk-stocking First District on the Upper East Side.

  For lunch, FDR usually dined at either the Metropolitan Club or the Army-Navy Club, both of which were within easy walking distance. Several times a week, and most weekends, he would hoist his golf bag over his shoulder and clamber aboard the Connecticut Avenue streetcar for the long ride to Chevy Chase. “Yesterday P.M. I golfed and went to the Department in the evening,” he wrote Eleanor. “Today I have played 45 holes and am nearly dead!”52 Roosevelt was a natural long-ball hitter and, according to the author Don Van Natta, Jr., one of the best presidential golfers to play the game.53 Sometimes FDR would join a congressional foursome at Chevy Chase, and in later years he was often paired with the junior senator from Ohio, Warren G. Harding, who was as easygoing and likable as Roosevelt himself.54

  In the autumn of 1913 Eleanor and the children joined Franklin in Washington. They moved into the handsome four-story brick town house owned by TR’s sister Bamie (Eleanor’s aunt and FDR’s cousin) at 1733 N Street, N.W., six short blocks up Seventeenth Street from the Navy Department. Bamie and her husband, Rear Admiral W. Sheffield Cowles, had lived there when the admiral was stationed in Washington, and both Eleanor and Franklin had stayed in the house on their various visits to the capital when TR was president. In 1901 TR himself lived there briefly while Ida McKinley, the president’s widow, vacated the White House. Later, as president, TR visited so frequently that the press began to call it the Little White House. “We’re really very comfortably settled now in this dear, bright house,” Eleanor wrote her friend Isabella Ferguson. “I feel very much at home, chiefly because Auntie Bye [Bamie] lived here.”55

  It was a snug fit. In addition to the three children (Anna, James, and Elliott), Eleanor brought a car and chauffeur from Hyde Park, four servants, a nurse, and a governess. Four years later, after the addition of two more children (FDR, Jr., and John), the Roosevelts moved to much larger quarters at 2131 R Street, a double town house some sixty feet wide that Bamie also owned.56 Franklin and Eleanor paid the expenses in both houses but lived rent-free. Bamie and her husband were comfortably ensconced at “Oldgate,” the Cowles estate in Farmington, Connecticut, and were content simply to have their Washington homes remain in the family. Meanwhile, FDR leased his New York town house on East Sixty-fifth Street to Thomas W. Lamont, a senior partner (and later chairman) of J. P. Morgan & Co.

  Nineteen-thirteen was the first year for federal income tax under the Sixteenth Amendment. The rate was 1 percent, graduated to 6 percent for those with incomes above $500,000 a year. Dividends were not taxed. FDR’s returns for the eight years he was in Washington show a gross income that averaged slightly more than $20,000 annually. (To convert to current dollars, multiply by 18.) Five thousand dollars came from his salary as assistant secretary, another $5,000 from rent on the New York town house, and the remainder from interest and dividends. FDR invested primarily in high-dividend-paying banks, railroads, and General Electric. After deductions and exemptions, his federal tax bills averaged somewhat less than $200.57*

  It was as assistant secretary of the Navy that FDR established his enduring relationship with Louis Howe. Two days after he was sworn in, Franklin asked Howe to join him at the Navy Department (evidently he had made the offer before leaving Albany). “Dear Ludwig,” he wrote. “Here’s the dope. Secretary—$2000—Expect you April 1 with new uniform.”58 Howe telegraphed his acceptance instantly: “I am game but it’s going to break me.”59 In truth, Howe had never made so much money, nor with more security. He hurried to Washington, bringing his family with him, and rented an apartment in the 1800 block of P Street, two blocks from the Roosevelts. Every morning at 8:15 sharp he would call for Franklin, and the two would walk to the Navy Department. FDR’s son Elliott fondly remembers his father “striding down Connecticut Avenue with Louis hurrying along at his side. The two of them looked uncannily like Don Quixote and Sancho setting out to battle with giants.”60

  Howe was more than a secretary. Later he joked that when he arrived in Washington he knew so little that for the first several days he was reduced “to blotting Franklin’s signature.”61 Within weeks he was on top of the job. Howe became the junior member of a two-man firm dedicated to furthering FDR’s career. As one biographer has written, Howe and Roosevelt played politics like doubles partners played tennis and their goal from the beginning was the White House.62 For Howe the decision was simple: he loved power. Eleanor, who later developed a great affection for Howe, said, “Louis had enormous interest in having power, and if he could not have it for himself, he wanted it through someone he was influencing.”63 Roosevelt, for his part, found in Howe an extension of his own persona who automatically operated in his interest without requiring hands-on control. Howe had no agenda of his own. The veteran journalist John Gunther put it best when he wrote, “If FDR had come out for the Devil, it wouldn’t have mattered much to Louis Howe.”64

  Ostensibly, Howe’s duties involved labor relations, special investigations, and speechwriting. He also took charge of patronage, handled Roosevelt’s correspondence, made appointments for his boss, wheedled postmasterships for deserving upstate Democrats, and kept his finger on the pulse of New York politics, building an organization to challenge Tammany when the time came. He thought up myriad projects for Roosevelt to sponsor and insofar as possible took the blame for whatever went wrong. He mastered the intricacies of the Navy’s bureaucracy with remarkable swiftness. As Daniels put it, Howe “knew all the tides and eddies in the Navy Department, in the administrat
ion, and in the political life of the country. He advised [FDR] about everything. His one and only ambition was to help steer Franklin’s course so that he could take the tide at the full. He was totally devoted. He would have sidetracked both President Wilson and me to get Franklin Roosevelt to the White House.”65

  FDR was never a friend of paperwork. He had an exceptional ability to absorb information and was able to make decisions rapidly, but his attention span was short. Paperwork was Howe’s strength. He read quickly, wrote quickly, and had a way with words that was lucid and convincing. He had a newsman’s ability to distill essential facts from vast amounts of information and make the most wearisome details appear interesting. Howe’s mordant sense of humor, his distrust of piety, and his biting cynicism also appealed to FDR. Roosevelt’s personal letters to Howe, often in a jocular German, express an instinctive rapport. “Lieber Ludwig,” he would write. “Hier bin ich, mit grosser Gesundheit und Vergnügen,” which translated means “Here I am in great health and having loads of fun.”66 FDR benefited personally as well. Howe, who loved to bet on the ponies and visit establishments less than genteel, knew much about life that Roosevelt never had the opportunity to learn. Howe shared those experiences and made Franklin more worldly. Frances Perkins once wrote that FDR’s Harvard education was a political handicap.67 In many respects Louis Howe was the antidote.

  Howe, the older man, always called Roosevelt by his first name and spoke out whenever he thought FDR was mistaken. “Louis Howe was a damned smart able man and the best advisor Roosevelt ever had,” said Admiral Emory S. Land, “because he had the guts to say ‘no.’ ”68 Few people could have talked to FDR the way Howe was overheard on the telephone: “You damned fool! You can’t do that! You simply can’t do it.… If you do it, you’re a fool—just a damned idiotic fool.” Howe said jokingly that his principal function in Washington was to provide “toe weights to keep Franklin’s feet on the ground,” and FDR accepted Howe’s advice, usually without question.69*

  As assistant secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt’s impact on the policies of the Wilson administration was minimal. But his duties in the Navy Department were significant, and, more important, his eight years in Washington provided a proving ground where he learned the realities of national politics. Under the tutelage of Daniels and Howe, FDR came to appreciate the diversity of the Democratic party, the need to accommodate regional politicians, and the importance of small favors and public gestures. Howe taught Franklin how to deal with organized labor. As assistant secretary, FDR had supervisory responsibility for the Navy’s vast civilian workforce—tens of thousands of workers at Navy yards across the country. Howe insisted that Roosevelt handle labor relations personally. Time and again he would usher union leaders and delegations of workmen into Franklin’s office to chat with “the Boss.” Always a good listener, FDR was at his best in these exchanges. “I want you to feel that you can come to me at any time in my office,” he was soon telling union spokesmen, “and we can talk matters over. Let’s get together for I need you to teach me your business and show me what’s going on.”70

  Much to the discomfiture of the Navy’s stiff-as-starch officer corps, the assistant secretary’s office became the clearinghouse for labor’s complaints. FDR took the workers’ concerns seriously, and whenever possible used his authority to settle their grievances. “The laboring men all liked him,” Daniels remembered. “If there was any Groton complex, he did not show it.”71

  Roosevelt’s contact with union leaders filled a large gap in his political education. Many with whom he worked became lifelong friends and supporters. When he stepped down as assistant secretary in 1920, FDR could boast with only slight exaggeration that there had not been a single strike or work stoppage on his watch.72 Eleanor said later that thanks to Louis Howe, FDR’s experience overseeing the nation’s Navy yards was largely responsible for having made her husband “more than just a very nice young man who went out in society and did a fair job but was perfectly conventional about it.”73

  Dealing with Congress proved equally instructive. FDR learned that informal favors granted graciously often counted for more on Capitol Hill than cogent arguments and party loyalty. Constituents routinely asked congressmen to run interference with government departments, and the Navy was no exception. Sometimes a sailor wanted an early discharge, sometimes compassionate leave, forgiveness for misdeeds, and so forth. Roosevelt did his best to fulfill every reasonable request that came from the Hill, and many of those that were not so reasonable as well.*

  When Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the ranking member of the Naval Affairs Committee, sought a promotion for his nephew, Roosevelt complied.74 When Massachusetts congressman George Tinkham asked that a young sailor, Josef Paul Zukauskas, be discharged because boxing manager John Buckley thought he had promise, FDR did so promptly. Zukauskas later fought professionally as Jack Sharkey, “the Boston Gob,” and took the heavyweight title from Max Schmeling in 1932. Sitting in the Oval Office many years after that favor had been done, FDR told Frances Perkins that what congressmen wanted most was to have “a nice jolly understanding of their problems rather than lots of patronage. A little patronage, a lot of pleasure, and public signs of friendship and prestige—that’s what makes a political leader secure with his people and that is what he wants anyhow.”75

  Other department responsibilities molded Roosevelt. The Navy was frequently called upon to maintain order and protect American interests in the Caribbean. For years he enjoyed telling how an agitated William Jennings Bryan raced into his office one afternoon in 1914 shouting, “I’ve got to have a battleship. White people are being killed in Haiti, and I must send a battleship there within twenty-four hours.”

  Roosevelt told Bryan that would be impossible. “Our battleships are in Narragansett Bay and I could not get one to Haiti in less than four days steaming at full speed. But I have a gunboat somewhere in the vicinity of Guantanamo and I can get her to Haiti in eight hours if you want me to.”

  “That is all I wanted,” said Bryan. The secretary of state turned to leave, then stopped. “Roosevelt,” he said, “when I talk about battleships, don’t think I mean anything technical. All I meant was that I wanted something that would float and had guns on it.”76

  The situation in Haiti to which Bryan was responding was not unlike that which had erupted in the Dominican Republic ten years earlier. Because of widespread corruption in the collection of customs revenue, the Dominican Republic had found itself unable to pay the interest on its foreign debt. European powers had threatened to intervene, at which point Cousin Theodore had stepped in and assumed responsibility under color of the Monroe Doctrine.* The United States initially established a fiscal protectorate over the republic and, when unrest did not abate, transformed that into a military occupation that continued until 1924.

  In Haiti, the nation’s finances had collapsed and France and Germany threatened to assume control to protect their investors. The Haitian government initially refused American assistance, riot and revolution followed, and in 1915 Wilson ordered Daniels to intervene. Marines were dispatched from Guantánamo to Port-au-Prince, and Haiti, like the Dominican Republic, became an American protectorate. Daniels staunchly opposed long-term occupation of the island, and gradually FDR embraced Daniels’s position.77 In his inaugural address in 1933, FDR replaced the Roosevelt corollary with what he called the “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America. Subsequently, at Montevideo in December 1933, the United States joined the nations of the Western Hemisphere in pledging that “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.”78 The following year the United States formally renounced its right to intervene in Cuba under the Platt Amendment,79 and FDR withdrew the last American marines from Haiti—nineteen years after the occupation had begun.

  * Wilson, like many white southerners, believed segregation to be divinely ordained. As president of Princeton he barred the admission of blacks and later told Sambo stories
in cabinet meetings. When challenged about segregation in the federal government, he defended it as a means of reducing tension. “It is as far as possible from being a movement against the Negroes,” he wrote Oswald Garrison Villard of The Nation. “I sincerely believe it to be in their interest.” In a similar message to H. A. Bridgman, editor of Congregationalist and Christian World, Wilson said, “I think if you were here on the ground [in Washington], you would see, as I seem to see, that it is distinctly to the advantage of the colored people themselves.”

  There is no doubt that was Wilson’s view. There is also no doubt that virtually all black leaders were disappointed by it. “When the Wilson Administration came into power,” wrote New York’s Amsterdam News, “it promised a ‘new freedom’ to all people, avowing a spirit of Christian Democracy. But on the contrary we are given a stone instead of a loaf of bread; we are given a hissing serpent instead of a fish.”

  The NAACP was equally critical. In a public letter to Wilson published in The New York Times, the association asked, “Shall ten million of our citizens say that their civil liberties and rights are not safe in your hands? To ask that question is to answer it. They desire a ‘New Freedom,’ too.”

  Ironically, Wilson had appealed for black votes in 1912 and had actually won the largest number ever given to a Democratic presidential candidate. But the anti-Negro bias of the administration caused most blacks to return to the Republican Party, where they remained until FDR ran in 1932.

  Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House 3, 502 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947); Josephus Daniels, The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels 195, 234, 321, 414, 493, E. David Cronon, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963). WW to OGV, July 23, 1913; WW to HAB, September 8, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress. Amsterdam News, October 3, 1913; The New York Times, August 18, 1913.